It All Hurts Just the Same
by ThisIsWhereMyPseudonymShouldBe
Summary: Its been more than 5 years since Clare has seen Eli. When Adam calls and asks for her to check on him, she reluctantly agrees to do it. Will she be shocked with what she finds? Warning: abuse, alcoholism, eating disorders, depression, and self harm are mentioned. Very OOC
1. Chapter 1

"Eli isn't answering his phone," the tired man at the other end commented off-handedly giving a half-hearted laugh to accompany the news.

"Why is that important to me?" Clare Fitzgerald shot back almost as monotonously as the news was given.

"Well you live closer I was just wondering if you could check on him?" Adam asked with the same bored tone.

"Adam I made this clear time and time before, Eli and I cut off all contact to each other after high school," Clare snapped.

"I'm not asking you to marry the guy I'm asking you to make sure he's not laying dead in his apartment," he slurred. Clare knew he was not sober, but then again when was he ever.

"Fine, whatever," Clare shot back hanging up without a goodbye.

She composed herself and stumbled her way into her kitchen, opening her liquor cabinet and pulling out a bottle. She drank straight from the bottle seeing her old high school flame was not something she wanted to be thinking about right now. She drank until she heard a car door slam from outside, she set the bottle down and rubbed her temples she knew what was going to happen next.

"Clare," her husband Mark called out angrily lumbering his way into the kitchen. He snatched up the Absolut that she had just set down and waved it around a bit yelling obscenities. She could already smell the alcohol on his breath from the trip to a bar with his buddies. "You worthless little whore!" he shouted.

"What the hell, Mark?" Clare yelled back. "If you're just going to hate me why don't we get a divorce?"

"Because I still love you," he said through his teeth, tightening his grip on her wrist. Next thing she knows his hand collided with her cheek, she gasped, but wasn't shocked, things like this happen all the time. They were both wasted and arguing about God knows what, throwing insults and punches at each other. This is how it's always been and she's sure this is how it'd always be.

* * *

The next morning Clare arrived at the old apartment building in downtown Toronto. She looked at the address she messily scribbled on the back of a Chinese take-away menu and identified this building as the place. A headache rang through her head and at that moment she wished to be at the liquor store down the street, she longed to feel the curves of a nice bottle of Jack Daniels. She shook her head, if things go well she'd be in and out and back home in no time. Smoothing her shirt she exited the car and made her way into the dilapidated building, the foyer was dirty, for the lack of a better word. A single light dimly lit the room and a person, the landlady she presumed, was asleep with her head resting on the desk. As she made my way up the stair she took note of the dimly lit hallways and peeling paint. She perused the numbers until she found the one she was looking for apartment number 23B. A wave of nervousness overtook her body, but she ignored it and knocked anyways.

"What are you doing here?" someone questioned opening the door. There he stood, Eli Goldsworthy, but it didn't look like him he was wearing a white v-neck that was close to falling off his shoulder and he had on regular jeans. He was incredibly skinny his bones seemed to stick out in odd angles and his cheeks were sunken in. His once vibrant green eyes were dull and lifeless and were surrounded by dark circles. He didn't even sound the same his smooth voice was long gone and was replaced by a cracked and hoarse one.

"Adam wanted me to check on you," Clare tried to explain still nervous and still longing for a drink.

He moved from the door a bit and made a simple motion to invite her in "He sobered up long enough to worry about me? Great, but I don't need to be checked on."

"At least you have someone to care about you," She shot back venom laced in her voice.

He lit a cigarette and held the pack out to her, "Fag?" she shook her head no and he just shrugged, "still as saintly as ever Clare Edwards." He commented blowing out smoke from his mouth.

"Its Clare Fitzgerald now," Clare whispered, her mind daring her to tell him about her drinking habits.

"Married old Fitzy boy. How's he been?" Eli laughed. A fake grating laugh that much more resembled nails on a chalkboard than the laugh that she had once known.

"He's been well," Clare answered even though he could care less.

They stood in an awkward silence as Clare kept analyzing the room, papers full of jumbled words covered the floors and the paint, like in the hallways, was peeling. Her eyes adverted back to her old lover, her blue eyes judging his whole body. "_When was the last time he ate?"_ She thought to herself. He just stood letting the smoke from his second cigarette pour out of his mouth.

To break the silence he apologized for the mess, and how if he had known she was coming that he would've cleaned up a bit. His tone was apathetic and not matching the words rambling from his mouth. _"Would he have cleaned if he had known?"_

"When's the last time you ate?" Clare asked curiously.

His dull green eyes widened and he had a deer in the headlights look on his face, he rambled nonsense about how he was never that hungry and that he was always too busy.

That's when she noticed the scars lining his wrists as he ran his hand through his dark brown hair trying to find excuses for his eating habits. _"He was truly a man locked inside his own mind,"_ she thought. She picked up one of the papers from the ground and started reading it. Eli had gone back to his apathetic motif that he had held since she had knocked on the door. The words on the paper seemed jumbled and not on one thought track, like a million other people trying to write the same concept. She tried to read more but it just rattled her brain, her headache still pounded and her longing for some kind of alcohol seeped into every bone in her body.

Clare looked at Eli for a moment before speaking. "You should call Adam."

He nodded gently and pulled the cigarette back to his mouth and inhaling. "I should," he spoke again with the same old bored tone.

"Well I guess this is goodbye," Clare stated putting out her hand for him to shake. He shook it gently.

"Goodbye Clare," Eli replied shaking her hand softly.

Clare showed her way out and ran down the steps of the dilapidated apartment building. She flew out the front doorway and into Toronto's brisk weather, calming down a bit she walked away and towards the liquor store down the street. "_This is how it's always been and she's sure this is how it'd always be." _She thought with regret as she gripped the curves of a bottle of Jack Daniels and made her way to the register.


	2. Chapter 2

Clare gripped the bottle of liquor tightly and walked down the street of a mostly abandoned part of town. This side of Toronto has remained almost untouched for years and had become victim to urban decay. She stopped at a rusty old bench and sat down opened the bottle and taking a sip. A gentle sip, not like the usual way she would drink, she wanted to make it back home in one piece. This area, this bench in particular, held sweet memories along with some bitter ones. Tears welled in her eyes as they canvased the area The Dot stood on the corner but had long been deserted and the storefronts that were one alive and bustling were boarded up. The bench, the rusty old bench, the bench that Eli and Clare came to when they skipped school, the bench that Eli waited for her on April 22, the bench that he had sat at before deciding to crash his car.

Wiping tears Clare took another sip.

"Trying to get drunk Saint Clare?" A voice, a cracked hoarse voice, questioned from behind her.

"When I'm sober I feel pain, so what's the point?" Clare shot back. "Don't call me a saint, I'm a sinner."

Eli removed the cigarette from his mouth and tapped off some of the ashes before sitting down, "So where have you been, Blue Eyes?" He asked making Clare heart flutter the slightest at the old nickname, "I mean like after high school."

"Nowhere really, went to college in Toronto, got a job in Toronto, got married and still living in Toronto. Let me tell you something about this town though it tends to have a nasty habit of keeping people in it. The only way out is to either be famous or dead." She sighed debating whether or not to take another sip, _'Just a sip closer to not being sober.' _Shedecided taking a sip.

"Ah nice, I get what you mean trying to leave is like hell,"

"Being here is hell," Clare cut in.

"Even hell can get comfy once you've settled in," Eli reasoned blowing out smoke.

"Yeah I guess." Clare paused, "Remember this bench?"

"Yeah I do," he smiled running his bony fingers through his hair. "It's a wonder how one place can hold your best and worst memories." He laughed the same nails to a chalkboard laugh.

"Yeah," Clare sighed taking it all in.

"This was the place you left me for the last time, said it was no use in trying to maintain a long distance relationship," he stated, not angrily more so sad then anything.

"You moved to New York I couldn't wait on you forever," Clare defended with a slight slur as the alcohol took effect. _'I wish I had.'_ She thought to herself.

"Forever? I was only going to be gone for four years, I was going to visit," Eli cried. "I didn't want to stay here, but somehow I got pulled back in."

"Four years, seems like an eternity when the one you love is nearly 500 miles away," Clare shot back.

"Love? Tell me another lie, love waits you know?" he chastises.

"You want another so called lie? I love you and I never stopped, it's been five years and never once did you not cross my mind," she yelled. Hot, angry tears streaked down her face as she takes another sip.

"You'll drink yourself to death," he warned.

"Why do you care? You sit here obviously not eating for days on end and smoking that damn cigarette and you have the guts to tell me what I'm doing is unhealthy? I drink to heal the pain, I drink to forget, and I drink to make it easy. If I didn't drink I would already be dead," Clare stated cynically. It was the only truth she had left to give to him.

"I know what I do is bad," he muttered. "I care, because I just do, okay?"

"You never stopped," Clare murmured happily.

"I never stopped and I probably never will stop."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"When you came to my apartment today I was so shocked, I finally thought that could forget about you and you came and it sparked something in me." He rambled. "Emotions, Clare you came with a wave of emotions that I hadn't felt in years. And it felt amazing but you left so abruptly and I thought it'd be the last time I ever saw you."

"And then you found me drinking away the emotions that were brought by my visit," Clare acknowledged the state he had found her in. She looked at the amber bottle with a mix of lust and disgust she wanted to stop but it was her only way out.

"Kind of," Eli smirked pulling that damn cigarette back to his mouth, "its an addiction, we all have our things that let us drown out our demons. It's just that some of them can swim and you can't drown them. That's the hard part of it all."

"Yeah I guess it is," She confided. "I'm stuck in this limbo where nothings ever going to change and it honestly sucks. This is how it is and this is how it'll always be." She held the bottle up for a visual. "It's like clockwork I get drunk, Mark comes home, we insult and hit each other both drunk as hell, and then we go to bed; in the same bed like our marriage isn't falling apart, like we aren't abusive to each other. I told myself I'd never be like my mother but look at me now. I'm just a selfish machine here to take what I want and love and just show how much of a dirty, sick animal I really am."

"You are none of those things, you know that, right?" Eli questioned.

"I'm all those things, I've always been. Can't you see Eli?" She argued.

"Do you know what piercing the veil means?"

"No."

"It literally means to take something that you are unhappy with and remove it at the source. Maybe you have some skeletons you need to remove before you're happy." Eli explained.

"Sounds like I need to contact a divorce lawyer," Clare whispered.

"Whatever you need to do."

Clare pondered the thought a bit running her hands through her curls. "Well I think its time for another goodbye," Clare concluded.

Eli messily scribbled his number on a piece on his cigarette pack before handing it to her. "Goodbye Clare, call me anytime and remember what I said about piercing the veil." He stood up and looked into the dark sky.

"Goodbye and I will," Clare assured holding her hand out.

"Now I hope we don't let five more years pass before we meet again," Eli said as her shook her hand and walked off.

"I hope we don't," Clare whispered watching his retreating figure make his way into the shadows.

**A/N: This story was originally supposed to be a one-shot but I decided to make it into a two-shot and if I get inspired it may become more… who knows? Also if you can find the musical references I will love you forever (hint i dropped a band name and one of their albums, along with some lyrics from other bands)**


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